No Do-Overs

The last blog I wrote was about kids and parents. I heard from a harried mom who has forgotten that she's the adult in charge. What an easy thing to do today with all the babble telling us how we will hurt our children if we don't_____and that we must do_____or our children will become____
You can fill in the blanks.

I want to quote some of our latest Esther lesson. "Our human nature not only sets us up for selfishness but to feel uncomfortable and incompetent----If people around us helped us avoid every possible unpleasantness, fixed every hangnail, and anesthetized every headache for us, we'd quit learning how to deal with difficulty. We'd forget how to cope and we'd crush under the least inconvenience.----Strength comes from muscle, and muscle develops with a workout."

Wow! What wisdom. We want to avoid difficulty for ourselves and the ones we love, but if we do things that avoid it, those muscles won't develop, and we'll crack like a young sapling in a high wind.

That's what this economic mess is about today. American people don't want to have to do without or wait for fulfillment. That's like spoiled children who always get what they want by whining and crying. Their parents come to their "rescue." The government is doing the same thing today--coming to the rescue of those people who've made their own messes. As with both scenarios, it's the others around them who have to suffer the consequences.

A young man killed a deputy one night here in our town. He was already a wanted man for something else he'd done. A few years earlier he was charged with being an accessory to murder but was let go for some reason. This time they caught him and charged him. We found out he has two older brothers who are in prison for murder. The mother of these three men got on television and praised her sons; said they had been mistreated by the law and "they're good boys." Wonder how many times as they grew up she allowed them to face consequences and deal with difficulties?

I made many mistakes when my girls were growing up, but one thing I don't think I did was to shield them from life and its problems. They seem to be strong and know how to withstand adversity. Of course, if I could have a "do over" I'd try to do it better next time. But life doesn't give us do overs. We need to figure out how to do it right the first time.